Kabiyesi Aromolaran, SARS and stories that rile

FALANA, in Yoruba morphology, is pejorative. The name, when employed as red-flag euphemism, is to ward interlopers off. Lagos lawyer, Femi, is truly a Falana, but his interloping, has largely been for public good. Last Wednesday, he issued a fatwa on the new terror-on-the-block SARS and were we to be a country with redeeming virtues, his thoughts on how the Nigerian citizens could end the nationwide SARS carnage and corruption, should be a national edict.

We can’t surrender the nation to the dogs while the heavenlies are sorting us and that is why everyone is concerned about, not just the simultaneous SARS national malady, but the belly-upside down situation in the country, should spare time to read the so-long-a-letter.

My dear childhood friend who frantically called from Ilesa Thursday afternoon should also read the Ecclesiastes from Falana. In about a month and a half, SARS in Ilesa, Osun State, arrested his son three times and demanded bail money on all occasions! According to the story Bode (surname kept though he wanted his full identity published because he was ready to “follow SARS die”), told, the first time his son who is awaiting admission, was arrested in company with his friends strolling in broad daylight, N27, 000 was extorted from my friend, leaving an outstanding of N3,000 because everyone was afraid that the boy could be killed if left in the custody of the monsters from Ijamo and Ayeso police stations till daybreak. He went borrowing to save his son.

Weeks later, the same boy was picked again, on the same excuse of being a suspected yahoo guy. The Bode of our secondary school days came to the fore. He willed the boy to the SARS extortionists and sensing the father wasn’t ready to cough out money this time, the boy was freed the next day, and asked to go look for money to bail his seized phone. His parents “arranged” N4, 000 and he was let off the “yahoo” hook. Then, Thursday. Moments after a two-hourly confrontation with the SARS operatives who picked the same boy again, right in front of his father’s house, Bode called in, expressing his readiness for any length with the dark-clothed, dark-hearted, devil-purchased fellows, terrorising Ilesa and environs. Bode dared the devil in them and after harassing him with gun and machete (imagine police going about with cudgels. As what?), they left without his son. There is something about the paroxysm of Abiyamo tooto (genuinely loving and sacrificial parenting) that even Sergeant Rogers, won’t dare. My friend has been pushed to the wall. He is frighteningly-determined to end the oppressors’ reign of terror. He can lead a well-structured advocacy. He can make the national campaign against SARS’ impunity heard loud and clear in our Ilesa locality. But it is a brain job, not a dangerous brawny collision with those being propelled by hell.

Falana, in the write-up, alluded to the new SARS’ style of dodging extrajudicial prosecution by shooting their victims in the back, to claim they were shot while fleeing. Hear Falana,  “I have noted that in a bid to prevent the courts from indicting the operatives of the SARS for extrajudicial executions, criminal suspects are now shot in the back to give the impression that they were killed while trying to escape from custody! Others are said to have been killed during “shoot out” with the operatives of the SARS”

That is why Bode should first be thankful that Ayomide, the baby of the house, didn’t suffer the fate of certain victims whose stories were the highlight of a report on the same SARS I was tidying up for Saturday Tribune edition of yesterday, specifically for the Weekend Lagos page, while our conversation was on.

ALSO READ: Buhari administration’s many odious scandals

A particular teacher in yesterday’s report didn’t recover from the manhandling he received from SARS in Lagos and he died. Another victim, who got justice by making enough noise to get the officers dismissed, hadn’t recovered completely from the assault he received from those fellows.

From Police official records in Lagos, 90 officers were variously sanctioned in just six months and a certain Transmission Oga-at-the-top, had not seen justifiable reasons, to disband this unit, which irascibility and corruption sweet-tooth is now doing much more damage than the felonious acts of their forerunners who took the policing system into public infamy in the first place.

I have no graveyard muse for any moving elegy. Bode should not be as daring as our secondary school days. You are steps away from grandpa-hood. Combating the evil of an arrangement that the current police leadership seemed to have inked on some sort of demonic altar, would require tact, to avoid the kind of unpleasant situations we used to sing about, decades back, during our unbreke ( rock-hard plastic foot balls) sessions “fo lese, boku o kugbe” (break his leg and let him die in vain). The UWO (Uniform Walking Objects) packaged into SARS nationwide, appear to be taking their tutorials from the same manual, which only hell could have manufactured. These characters have killed, will kill and continue to kill, until disbanded; a desire which is a mere wish for now, considering the extent the Oga in Abuja has gone to preserve it, including renting crowds, obviously for a fee, to march in its favour.

The wrong orientation of lack, would make many Nigerians do anything for a fee, including protesting against their heritage. If Bode put himself in harm’s way, he would be surprised that in the same Ilesa, if the price is right, many would protest in favour of SARS, justifying his killing. That is when they would remember he had always been too daring. But who is that father, worth the title, who would not confront harm, to save a beloved son.

It’s a deliberate act, leaving the Osun CP out because he and his ilk are just mere transistor radio. Abuja speaks and they roll out as transmitted into them. But Abuja isn’t in charge of the palace of the Owa Obokun Adimula of Ijesaland. His Royal Highness, Oba Adekunle Aromolaran doesn’t take order from Osogbo. Kabiyesi is solely responsible to his people. However, I have a little dilemma communicating the message here because proverbs and wisecracks would have been very apt, but in Yoruba culture, a young fellow is barred from what is considered the exclusively preserve of the elders, let alone, the royalty, the ultimate preserver of the people’s heritage. Well, guess I won’t be sanctioned for “Agba ki wa loja, kori Omo tuntun wo. Oloju o ki la, ki talubo kowo. Tooto, o se bi owe eyin Agba. Kabiyesi ooo.